It’s funny. The last time I seriously played anything W-W related was back in the late ’90s. The Table-Top game almost made my open-hand slap a bunch over-opinionated, whiney, players while I had a blast playing a new Gangrel in the LARP. Goes to show you that people can make all the difference in a game. 🙂

I miss LARPing, though there’s one thing I noticed about it (versus tabletop). The point at which a tabletop game becomes unwieldy (in numbers) is where a LARP just starts to cook. Or is that just my experience? (The best GM I ever had could juggle about 8 or 9 players, but a LARP group generally has to be at least that big, or it might as well be tabletop. At least enough to have a couple different conversations going.)

It was basic D&D type stuff, you played as a class like Warrior, Healer, Mage, Scout, etc or a monster class. Every weekend you turned up and played, you got an experience point, and you could get some extras for having a good costume or taking part in special events. Every few experience points your class got a level and some new abilities.

For me it was mostly the physical activities, picking teams and running around smacking each other with foam weapons and bean bag spell balls in the local parks and playgrounds. There was a bit of court and once or twice I took part in a Moot, where our group met with other groups around the state who played the same game and got together for a weekend for more roleplaying themed stuff that also usually had a big battle with probably a hundred people on each side.

My own experience with V:TM (Larp or otherwise is pretty limited). No Larpign experience and I’ve onyl played a few White Wolf games, only one of which was a V:TM game. And that game was relatively short and took place in the Dark Ages where I played as a Ventrue Knight Templar.

As for the huge battles, it was pretty fun and it could last pretty long. Not sure how most Larping groups handle dying on the battlefield, but in the system we used each person had a certain number of lives. When you get killed, you basically hold your weapons over your head and head off to the sidelines, then count off a minute) deduct one of your lives and head back out to the fight. When you hit 0 lives, you were out for the remainder of the fight.

They used to be scary dammit!
There’s one in a D&D game I’m in at the moment that’s pretty creepy. Good thing too, didn’t want the battle to come down to:
“Ok, I roll Bluff to trick him into thinking his mascara got smudged, then I hit him with a radiant attack while he’s frantically trying to figure out how to check his lack-of-reflection in the mirror!”

Not familiar with Pops’ type of vampires here, but they do seem more interesting. Sort of a cross between savage creatures of the night and Mad Max villains 😀

V:tM Is urban gothic horror fantasy fare. Most of the classic vampire mythos is represented by the various clans. You got your seductive bloodsuckers, your blood magic soul shenanigans, noble lords in their towers, ugly corpses down in the sewers… also biker gang fuck you I’m strong as shit anger management guys… ok so some of it is less classic than others but still.

Don’t forget the feral, animalistic shapeshifter vamps! And vampire dogma and holy wars! And everyone being all gothic punk! (Seriously, it could be unintentionally hilarious, intentionally hilarious, and occasionally really compelling. I just couldn’t get into playing a parasite slowly losing touch with the memory of their humanity.)